Business English Pod / English for Meetings / Page 16

BEP 81 – Meetings: Finishing Up and Action Points

Business English, English for Meetings, Intermediate English /

This Business English Podcast is a preview of our new audio / e-book for business English learners and teachers: Meeting Essentials

Meeting Essentials is a comprehensive study guide to the language and skills you need to participate effectively and confidently in business meetings in English. Learn on the go with over 4-hours of audio lessons, review key language and techniques with the detailed 100-page study guide, including a transcript of each podcast lesson, and practice useful phrases with the online activities.

It’s the end of a meeting, and everyone wants to go, but wait! We have one last thing to do: Action points. That means: Tell everyone who is going to do what, and when. Having no clear action points is a number one reason meetings are unproductive.

So in this episode, we’ll study language we can use to assign work to people, and also some English phrases to finish off the meeting.

We’ll be listening in to a group of bank managers discuss how to deal with credit risk problems before a major year-end report to top management. They have already discussed and decided what to do, and now they need to finish the meeting. As you listen, pay attention to how the boss, Lisa, gives action points to her team, that is, reminds them of what they need to do.

Listening Questions:

1) When will Lisa’s team have their next round of meetings?
2) What duties does Lisa assign during the meeting, and to whom?

*** This lesson is part of our Business English eBook for meetings: Meeting Essentials. Premium members click here to download the complete eBook.

Members: PDF Transcript | Quizzes | PhraseCast | Lesson Module

Download: Podcast MP3

BEP 70 – Mergers: Breaking Bad News

Advanced, Business English, English for Meetings, ESL Podcast /

This is the first in a three-part Business English Pod series that explores the use of many different language techniques in the context of a merger. Today’s episode focuses on vague, diplomatic language and probing questions. Vague and diplomatic language was introduced in podcasts BEP 24, BEP 51 and BEP 52, so you might wish to review those to refresh your memory.

In addition, we’ll be covering probing questions, which we first looked at in BEP 64. To probe is to explore or investigate, so probing questions are used to gather more detailed and targeted information. And I should also point out that there are two speaking practices at the end of this podcast – an action packed episode indeed.

For this series, we again visit our U.S.-based guitar manufacturer, which has a production plant in Costa Rica. In this episode, we find out that the company is merging with a larger guitar manufacturer. To merge is to join together. When two companies join together, we call this a “merger.”

The new owners want to cut costs, which might mean cutting jobs. So, an important question in the mind of our old friend Jack is – who is going to be fired? We join Jack and his boss Jim, who meets Jack by chance in the hallway of the company headquarters.

Listening Questions:

1. Who will Jack be meeting with after his chat with Jim?
2. What city might the Costa Rican plant move to?
3. Why do the new owners want to move the factory out of Costa Rica?

Premium Members: PDF Transcript

Download: Podcast MP3

BEP 68 – Meeting English: Dealing with Interruptions

Business English, English for Meetings, ESL Podcast, Intermediate English /

As a non-native speaker of English, you might often find yourself in situations like this: You’re sitting in a meeting or a teleconference, and some of the participants are native English speakers. They are speaking with one another very rapidly, and they are using some idiomatic or difficult-to-understand expressions. Someone says something you don’t understand, or perhaps something that is not true or that you disagree strongly with. You should interrupt to ask what they mean, to clarify, to correct – but you just can’t bring yourself to open your mouth. How do you start? How do you interrupt?

That’s the focus of today’s Business English podcast lesson. We’ll be studying useful language and expressions for interrupting and for resisting or stopping interruption.

The listening takes place in an internal meeting at Strand Technologies, a Hong Kong-based OEM of portable electronic devices, mainly MP3 and MP4 players. OEM stands for “original equipment manufacturer.” It refers to companies that manufacture other companies’ products for them. In this internal meeting, all three participants know each other well so the language is more informal and direct. As you listen, pay attention to how they use assertive language to interrupt each other in order to keep the meeting on track and arrive at positive result more quickly.

Listening Questions

1) What does Bill mean when he says they’re facing a “bottleneck?” What is the bottleneck?
2) Why can’t Bill just retrain the engineers he has?
3) What is Mei Lin’s suggestion to speed up the recruitment process?

*** This lesson is part of our Business English eBook for meetings: Meeting Essentials. Premium members click here to download the complete eBook.

Premium Members: Study Notes | Quizzes | PhraseCast | Lesson Module

Download: Podcast MP3

BEP 61 – American Sports Idioms in a Business Meeting

Business English, Business Idioms, Culture, English for Meetings, ESL Podcast /

This is the first in a series of Business English Practice Pods that review and extend the language that is covered in the regular podcast. Practice pod dialogs will revise key language but in different situations. Also, they give you more opportunities to practice what you’ve learned.

We’ll hear several idioms from Sports Idioms 1 (BEP 57) and 2 (BEP 58) being used in a new context in today’s dialog:

– to play ball
– to stall for time
– to keep/have one’s eye on the ball
– to step up to the plate

We’ll see how these idioms are useful in a different context, a business meeting. After the dialog, we’ll hear some further example phrases and then have a chance to practice using these idioms. Jen, Ken and Ryan of Ambient are in a marketing meeting discussing Accent’s recent buyout of Telstar.

Members: PDF Transcript

Download: Podcast MP3

BEP 43 – Meetings English: Managing the Discussion

Business English, English for Meetings, Intermediate English, Teleconference English /

This is the second in our two-part intermediate Business English Podcast series on opening and managing meetings in english. In the first episode, we looked at how to open a meeting. In today’s podcast lesson we’re going to cover how to manage the discussion.

Martin, the GM of Daneline Singapore, is discussing with his staff how to make up a budget shortfall. He has just asked Sandra to kick off the first item on the agenda – outsourcing the cleaning.

Listening Quiz

1) How much money can Daneline Singapore save by outsourcing cleaning?
2) Does Sam like pizza?
3) Does Dave agree with the strategy of outsourcing cleaning?
4) How does Dave suggest dealing with the brochure redesign?

*** This lesson is part of our Business English eBook for meetings: Meeting Essentials. Premium members click here to download the complete eBook.

Members: Study Notes | Quizzes | PhraseCast | Lesson Module

Download: Podcast MP3